Center Faculty
Samuel E. Karff, DHL
Rabbi Samuel E. Karff became Rabbi Emeritus of Congregation Beth Israel in May 1999 after serving his congregation for twenty-four years as Senior Rabbi.
Rabbi Karff is presently Associate Director of the John P. McGovern, M.D. Center of Health, Humanities, and the Human Spirit and Visiting Professor in the Department of Family Medicine at the University of Texas Health Science Center at the Texas Medical Center in Houston, Texas.
He was a lecturer in the Department of Religious Studies at Rice University from 1977 to 2001. Rabbi Karff received an A. B. degree Magna Cum Laude from Harvard College and earned a doctorate from Hebrew Union College, the seminary which ordained him. He has contributed chapters on Judaism to a college text Religions of the World, which has been used on over 200 campuses here and abroad.
He is the author of Agada: The Language of Jewish Faith, The Soul of the Rav, and Permission to Believe: Finding Faith in Troubled Times that was just released by Abingdon Press in 2005. He has contributed chapters to fourteen books and is a past president of the Central Conference of American Rabbis. He has lectured extensively in this country and abroad.
In 1999 he became the Founder and Director of the Health and Human Spirit Program at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston which in 2004 was expanded into the newly formed McGovern Center.
Rabbi Karff is on the Board of Directors for the Institute of Religion, Texas Medical Center-Houston; The Coalition for Mutual Respect, Anti-Defamation League; and is a former member of the Executive Committee and the Board of Trustees for the United Way of the Texas Gulf Coast.
See his most recent research and publications.
Contact information: samuel.e.karff@uth.tmc.edu
